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Monday, September 05, 2016

Basic funk ideas: four iterations - 01

A companion to our Basic funk with mixed stickings page from the other day. Here we take that same set of patterns, run them through some standard funk/fusion orchestrations, and learn to transition smoothly between them. I think you'll see the logic of each orchestration as you work through them— it's easier to get it that way than by me long-windedly explaining what's going on.

You can see that underneath all of the other stuff, the cymbal part in column A is just 8th notes; feel free to substitute any other standard ride rhythm you want. With column B you can accent the 2, or accent the cymbal notes and play the snare drum notes as filler. Column C is an inversion of the other rhythms;

Here's how I work on this page. I play through each line:
- Each measure 8 times.
- Each measure 4 times, 2 times, and 1 time in the following combinations: AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD. For example, the AB combination would be played:

||: A 4x | B 4x :||
||: A 2x | B 2x :||
||: A 1x | B 1x :||

You could also try something like:

||: A 2x | B 1x | C 1x :||

or

||: A 2x | C 1x | D 1x :||

The patterns should flow easily into each other, except there are a few places where you have to do three BD notes in a row, or you have to play a double stop on the SD/FT on the 'a' of 2, followed by a cymbal or hihat on the downbeat. At faster tempos you have the option of smoothing those transitions by omitting the circled note— or anything else that's slowing you up.